Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus

Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they u...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hau, Lisa Irene
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Edinburgh University Press 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: OAPEN - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02243nma a2200397 u 4500
001 EB002061277
003 EBX01000000000000001202388
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 220825 ||| eng
020 |a 9781474411097 
020 |a 9781474411073 
020 |a edinburgh/9781474411073.001.0001 
100 1 |a Hau, Lisa Irene 
245 0 0 |a Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus  |h Elektronische Ressource 
260 |b Edinburgh University Press  |c 2016 
653 |a Didacticism 
653 |a Early and Medieval 
653 |a Herodotus 
653 |a Literary Studies 
653 |a Thucydides 
653 |a Xenophon 
653 |a Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval 
653 |a Classics 
653 |a Classical 
653 |a Ancient History 
653 |a Diodorus Siculus 
653 |a Polybius 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b OAPEN  |a OAPEN 
500 |a Creative Commons (cc), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 
028 5 0 |a 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411073.001.0001 
856 4 2 |u http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30787  |z OAPEN Library: description of the publication 
856 4 0 |u https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/36ed824e-dbcf-425c-a567-4991f3f7c40f/642715.pdf  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 900 
520 |a Why did human beings first begin to write history? Lisa Irene Hau argues that a driving force among Greek historians was the desire to use the past to teach lessons about the present and for the future. She uncovers the moral messages of the ancient Greek writers of history and the techniques they used to bring them across. Hau also shows how moral didacticism was an integral part of the writing of history from its inception in the 5th century BC, how it developed over the next 500 years in parallel with the development of historiography as a genre and how the moral messages on display remained surprisingly stable across this period. 


For the ancient Greek historiographers, moral didacticism was a way of making sense of the past and making it relevant to the present; but this does not mean that they falsified events: truth and morality were compatible and synergistic ends.